My favorite steakhouse in Mexico City has been around for more than 90 years. Before the Nazi Party it was called the Swastika, and after, La Tablita. More recently it became Loma Linda, along with a major renovation. In the 40s my grandparents danced there and today it is at the top of its game as the local steakhouse for an affluent area.

Like any fine restaurant in Mexico City, the staff is enormous. A small army of valet parking attendants whisk cars away and block traffic for customers. A grand awning leads through a charming entrance to a sprawling dining room. Waiters display a tray of the daily meat cuts available. They serve chicken too, but almost everyone is ordering beef, which comes in huge 300 or 400 gram portions.

Steaks resemble small roasts and come on a sizzling metal grill heated by coals, served a bit underdone so that they do not overcook too quickly. Accompanying salads are easily made superfluous by the sizzling meat. Some cuts are served with a choice of sauces, but the one on every table is the house specialty, and the source of my personal obsession: chimichurri.

We also ordered favorite guilty pleasures.  Queso fondido is a bowl of melted cheese that you spoon out and eat with tortillas. And the classic dessert, crepes de cajeta, which is caramel made with goat’s milk. After an afternoon at Loma Linda, another Mexican custom is easily observed, the siesta.

I have never reviewed the Acme Cafe as it features prominently on my bias list, and frankly, I like it too much. I don’t want more people to go there, it is difficult enough to get a seat on weekends as it is. I usually go for dinner, but I will admit brunch is delicious at the Acme cafe.

The menu is short and the the point, and backs away from an izakaya in that it offers entree style dishes, although these too can be (and should be!) shared. There was no “fresh sheet,” but they had a seasonal spot prawn menu and some sashimi specials. The prices are higher than its sibling restaurants and more care is taken with the food.

The cocktail list is interesting, and we tried a margarita with sake, and plum wine with rum. Neither of these drinks were great successes for us, but lets be honest, when was the last time you had a really good cocktail at an izakaya?

Where Hapa Umi really shines is with an excellent sake menu that makes an effort to describe production methods and types. This is not your cheap hot sake territory; bring your Visa card.

We had grilled spot prawns off the seasonal menu and I loved them. Grilled perfectly and cut right in half, exposing the meat and brains for easy consumption, this is how spot prawns should be featured (take note Ensemble). Beef tataki was pretty and nice, with some reduced drops adding acid.

Halibut ceviche was beautiful, but I didn’t love it. The halibut was a bit tough, and the mix of raw onion and cherry tomatoes was confusing for “ceviche.” What really threw me in this dish was a strong shiso flavor, which I have discovered I do not enjoy, purely a personal preference.

Flown in that day, we had baby hamachi, a first for me, and very memorable. I could not help but compare this favorably to the higher-priced hamachi dish I hated at Ensemble.

The dynamite roll was delicious, with tempura white prawn and a bean, and a salmon roll was all the things it should be, and heavy on the salmon. We did not try any of the bigger, meaty entrees, but I did see sablefish go by our table and it looked excellent.

For desert, a very light but sensual cheesecake with sugar-encrusted shiso leaf, and a layered green tea and chocolate cake was beautiful and one of the more satisfying deserts I have had in some time.

Although I will continue to frequent my favorite izakayas around the city (preferring the cheap and cheerful approach), Hapa Umi is somewhere I would take a business colleague or out of town family. For quieter, more refined dinners, Hapa Umi offers delicious seafood in an almost-izakaya style.

As the former head chef of Lumiere and Canadian media darling, you can perhaps forgive a certain amount of hubris from Dale MacKay. And as the Chef worked the room, I saw some star-struck faces, while the house TVs shamelessly played Top Chef episodes in the background.

The cocktail list is short and interesting, but the ones we tried were too fruity to my taste. The wine list is unpretentious, featuring some decent wines at the $40 level, and some nicer ones at $70+.

The menu is enticing to read and has a fun mix of modern french food, but my excitement was soon put to rest. It was immediately apparent that portion size is preposterous, with most dishes around 4 bites at most, and the price point at an intimidating $12-18 or more per dish. Worse than this, the execution fails to live up to such high billing.

The Hamachi dish ($15) was particularly offensive, with a bit of grapefruit overpowering a tiny quantity of delicate but strangely coloured Hamachi, and a sesame and tofu puree combination that made no sense to me. Not only was the dish not good, at the price it was almost insulting. Do they know that Guu is next door?

The featured spot prawn cocktail dish was tiny and boring, but at least it was pretty and the horseradish cream on top was delicious. I liked the sweet and sour eggplant dish, ($8) and taken from Top Chef, a tiny portion of black cod was nice if unsophisticated with chili, bok choy and cilantro. ($18) The potato gnochhi was a highlight, with rocket and tomato butter sauce, ($10) while the lamb loin was extremely bland, almost tasteless, served with a strangely rich bulgar with black garlic and shiitake. ($24) Moules frites ($18) was average, and we had to ask for bread, which was oily and limp, shocking in a “French” restaurant.

Overall I thought there was a serious lack of acid and the seasoning seemed to be all over the place. The food just wasn’t that good and there wasn’t much of it.

I am sure the service was just trying to be helpful, but they were so attentive that they were annoyingly present and it felt like they were trying to turn our table. And when we ordered a bunch of dishes to share, they started out being served at a nice pace and ended up bringing everything at once, including the Moules, swamping our table and confusing our palettes. Pouring wine, our waitor was “not paying attention” as he poured 3 glasses ranging from small to huge and I was pleased to benefit from the imbalance.

Ensemble should compare themselves to the market and not to the now-defunct Lumiere. You can’t charge those prices for that food and expect to stay in business. The Top Chef novelty will wear off, and in my opinion, unless they make some changes in the direction of the fun and affordable concept I read about (but did not for a second see), they are doomed. Certainly the group I went with will never go back. After spending almost $100 per person we were underwhelmed and still famished and went out into a rainy night to find another restaurant to finish our dinner.

Somehow it took me eight months to visit Suika, an izakaya at Broadway and Fir, opened by the owners of Kingyo, one of the best izakayas in the city.

Like Kingyo, Suika has a charming, well-lit interior, an attentive staff and an exciting menu. The sake list is better than most and the fresh sheet is tantalizing. I was tempted by exciting fusion dishes like kimchi tomato, offering a familiar taste with a different texture, and corn tempura, a guilty pleasure that I wanted to dip into something. Sashimi shake salad is tossed table-side, a fun spectacle for a salad that was light on raw fish. A duck rice bowl impressed, but it was the beef short rib that caused my jaw to drop in disbelief, this dish is alone worth the visit, falling-apart tender, rich and gorgeous. Aburi style is featured, with sauces on pressed sushi, and we consumed many raw prawns. The taro root was served thick and the only dish I might not have again.

Unfortunately on my first visit we were seated at the worst table in the house and I was left staring at the bathrooms and penned in by a big group, which took some effort to take calmly. Worse, Suika promptly informed us that we had a 90 minute table limit and they were not kidding around. Food and drinks came out at a frenetic pace and at 60 minutes we were given last call for food.

The point of an izakaya is to socialize over drink and food, so the militant table limit poses a big problem for me, especially given the location.  But this does not diminish my overall enthusiasm for Suika and I look forward to a return visit at a better table. Designated drivers need apply.

Suika
(604) 730-1678
Fairview
1626 W Broadway
Vancouver, BC V6J

Kaboom Box (formerly known as Fresh Local Wild) serves a smoked sockeye salmon burger ($8) that rocks my world. I haven’t even been able to try the Elk burger or the wild mushroom poutine yet, I just can’t get by the sockeye.

Kaboom Box is organic, ocean wise and damn good. It is current undergoing a re-launch and a new location, stay tuned.

I am sending my Valentine’s day post out to Guu Garden, as it has stolen my heart from the other Guu izakayas. It feels like a well-kept secret, an elevated oasis offering a rare bit of tranquility downtown, and there is nowhere I would rather be on a cold and rainy night. The service is welcoming and on-point and like all Guu restaurants, the prices are extremely reasonable, sake flows freely, and the ever-changing Fresh Sheet reads like a wish list.

I will always credit Guu Garden for introducing me to oden, a classic Japanese dish that boils a selection of interesting treats in broth, such as whole egg, daikon and different kinds of tofu, and is served with Japanese mustard, Karashi. Guu offers both a miso and a kanto (soy) based broth. If you have never had oden, as I hadn’t until a few months ago, I suggest heading over to Guu, choosing your broth and leaving the rest to the Chef.

I don’t know if Guu Garden invented agadashi mozzarella, but it has become a favorite indulgence. Imagine agadashi tofu, but use mozzarella instead. Pure brilliance. Kabocha korokke is a big fried winter squash dumpling with a whole egg in the middle and a mayonnaise sauce, an interesting dish but not my favorite. I haven’t tried the chicken knee cartilage yet, but people rave about it.

The sashimi is always excellent and plentiful, one of the best deals around, and yes they will fry up those prawn heads for you. Sushi is box pressed and seared and the intense seasonings are a bit too much for me. One of my frequent dining companions will not go without the kimchi udon, and they serve what must be the best grilled mackerel in the city. For desert there are one or two good options, such as the sake & sea salt ice cream, which could use more of both, and my favorite, the kabocha (winter squash) pudding. Guu Garden is also open for lunch, with a smaller, bento-box oriented menu.

On this Valentine’s day, all my love to Guu Garden!

Guu Garden
(604) 899-0855
M101-888 Nelson Street
Vancouver, BC V6Z
www.guu-izakaya.com

I hadn’t been to Judas Goat in some months and I stopped in to enjoy the new dishes on the menu. Along with the rest of the Gastown restaurants owned by Sean Heather, Judas seems to be benefiting from the input of Rob Belcham.

Although I admit missing the rabbit rillette, I enjoyed the new shellfish & salmon options. The new sablefish was delicious with maple sugar even though I was fond of the israeli couscous. The beat salad is indulgently sweet with rosemary honey and the roast polenta with scallion and olive dressing was a highlight of the night. The foie on toast came in an almost insurmountable quantity but I can’t deny we finished it.